My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a renaissance woman working full time to live, to love, to learn, to be useful, and to be interesting.

September 01, 2016

Duke and I are leaving for a 9 week adventure in Peru and Ecuador. As I was preparing to start blogging again I discovered that Typepad doesn't really support blogging from an iPhone or iPad anymore. So I am leaving Typepad and moving to Wordpress. My new blog address is marionvermazen.com

Eventually I think I will move the content from this blog over to the new blog.

March 05, 2016

Friday was a very long day. We flew from Istanbul to San Francisco. As we were leaving our hotel I took a picture of the cat who has obviously adopted the hotel. It was outside the door whenever we came in or went out.

We spent Friday night in Walnut Creek at the Bruce's. Our granddaughter is much more confident on her feet then she was two months ago. She seemed happy to see us.

This morning we drove home to Reno. It rained almost all the way. It is very good to be home. The whole two months were an absolutely wonderful trip. We are already talking about where to go next and what we will do next time we go to Spain!

Thanks everybody for following along with us through this blog. I loved seeing your comments and likes. It made me feel connected to all of you and made the trip more enjoyable.

March 03, 2016

Tomorrow we fly from Istanbul back to San Francisco so today was the last day of our trip.

This morning we took the bus to Taksim square and wandered around a bit then had a coffee. The square is where demonstrations happen when there is unrest here. Today it was quiet and wet.

Then we visited the Basilica Cistern. It is a massive cistern built by the Byzantines in 532. There are 336 columns many of which are recycled from ancient temples. The whole massive structure is under the square by the Blue Mosque. It was just opened for public viewing in 1987.

It was raining most of the day but it stopped in mid afternoon and we were able to take a nice walk in the gardens around the Topkapi Palace - Gülhane Park.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Matbah that serves dishes with historic roots. The dishes are called Ottoman Palace Cuisine.